


Girls Just Wanna Have

by bbvhrla



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-08-31
Updated: 2014-01-12
Packaged: 2017-12-25 03:59:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 12,066
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/948373
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bbvhrla/pseuds/bbvhrla
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU in which Allison is bitten in the woods, and has to figure out how to deal with the help of her best friend, Lydia, and the mysterious Cora Hale.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by this lovely tumblr post:  
> http://obrozey.tumblr.com/post/56605187294/au-allison-argent-a-high-school-student-whose
> 
> There are a few other liberties I took with my AU:  
> Lydia and Stiles Melinski are magical!twins  
> Scott + Emissary!Mama McCall just moved to town  
> &  
> Cora and Laura stuck together after the fire (Derek survived but skipped town)
> 
> Also, as this is a series, later segments will include more characters and definitely more pairings. This is mostly just the pilot :)

Lydia’s voice on its own will never command a room. She speaks with confidence, yes, but years of careful regulation have left her volume soft. She does not speak over others. In conversation, she waits with the easy grace of one who understands meter, and when her moment comes, she pounces. It is not the volume that demands attention but the sound of her words, the way they form and rise up from her throat. Urgent, insistent, impossible to ignore.  And Allison isn’t _trying_ , would never _try_ to ignore someone, but when the racket of an atrium full of chattering students amplifies and fades with no warning, individual words become a little hard to differentiate. Underneath the clamor, in tempo with the lilting waves of speech that are pounding into her skull, beats the persistent _thu-thump_ of live, pumping hearts.

She curls her hand into the flimsy fabric of her skirt and squeezes her eyes shut.

"Jesus, Allison, what is up with you today?"

 _Allison_. The name lifts her, and she can feel their eyes on her even before she opens her own.

"What? Sorry."

She looks up across the table, intending to meet Lydia’s gaze in apology, but she lands on Scott instead, only sixteen and the worry lines along his brow are already beginning to set.

He’d offered to drive her home, didn’t know her well enough yet to insist when she’d refused. That they had a quiz in calculus was a good excuse, but it isn’t the real reason she’d chosen to go on with the day. Allison had been in a fight with her body since she was twelve, with poor metabolism and poorer self-esteem; this was just one more obstacle, a challenge, one she knows she can overcome.

She smiles without her teeth as Stiles, next to her, slings an easy arm around her shoulder.

“She’s cracking. Five years of listening to you bitch about boys, its a miracle she’s lasted this long.”

“I’m not talking about _boys_ ,” Lydia replies, the disdainful glance at her brother melding into one of disgust as she looks at Scott next to her and the table of lacrosse players beyond him. Her voice deepens as she continues, knowing the reaction it will incite in a way only siblings can. “I’m talking about a man, an adult, a lover - “

“Oh my _god_ Lydia.” Scott grins as Stiles groans into the table.

Maybe it’s the flash of his teeth, white canines exposed like a primordial threat, or maybe it’s the laugh that barks out of him, abrupt and low. Heat rushes her, blood spikes, and even in the awkward seconds after she stands she can’t say whether her original intent was not to rush him. The others are staring up at her, raising her awareness of how sudden was the movement, but her blood is still beating far too hot to think of apologies. _One leap, he’s just across the table_ , and her eyes are fixed on the tense muscles of his neck.

“Allison?”

His voice is low, calming. Tension melts from the air and even as she regains control she recognizes the feeling, the same one she’d felt that morning in the private confines of the McCall home and she understands, _his mother - she taught him how to talk to us._

“Are you done?” She nods to Lydia’s tray, can feel them relax, skin going loose in acceptance of her made-up excuse. “I want to go by my locker before French.”

“O-kay.” The end of the word rises with the speaker, a clear indication that, once they’re out of earshot of the boys, she does not intend to let this behavior go without comment.

Allison’s heart-rate goes up again as the make their way from the cafeteria’s center. She must be hooked on the boys, somehow, because she can still hear their conversation as clearly as if they were still seated at the table, and the unreality of that fact is unsettling, forcing her to recognize that the elevated hearing isn’t just some syndrome of the panic that’s been with her since the morning, _the woods._

_“You weren’t bad at tryouts, Scott, did you play at your old school?”_

She knows the answer, before he even speaks she knows. _Lacrosse isn’t big in Hawaii_. But his response surprises her, even more so in that it isn’t a lie. It just isn’t the truth she was expecting.

_“I used to play with my cousins some.”_

She doesn't realize she’s stopped walking until Lydia smacks her arm.

“Allison, seriously. What is going on? Where were you in home room? And why were you sitting with that kid, who is he?”

 _He doesn’t want people knowing where he’s from_. She’d been in-tune to him since they got to school, and hasn’t once heard him mention it.

“He’s - uh, he’s new this year.” She forces her feet forward. “He’s on the lacrosse team, 2nd line.”

“Obviously, Stiles is fucking _glowing_ about it. You’re avoiding the _issue_ -”

Lydia accentuates the statement by grabbing her arm and Allison’s whole body goes still. At first, the feeling is just the spillover from Lydia’s touch, although Lydia had quickly retracted the outburst by drawing back to swat away a loose strand of hair. When Allison looks up, slowly, the feeling intensifies.  Her eyes lock with those of a girl across the room.

The girl is leaning against the far wall, sleek leather padding her arms, straight, dark hair swaying in front of her eyes.

“After school,” Allison says, not breaking the girl’s gaze, and she can sense Lydia’s frustration mingle with relief at her promising words. “At lacrosse practice. I’ll tell you everything then. Lydia, who is that?”

“Hm? Uh - Kayla, Kara, something like that. Hale. Her family died in that fire, remember? I thought she dropped out.”

“Cora.”

The girl stiffens, _she heard me, across the room she heard_. “Cora Hale.”

“Right. Do you, like, know her, or something?”

“No.” The girl disappears through the far doors, never once turning her back to them; a reflection of a particular instinct which humans feel, too, which grows in those who recognize the world as a threat. It is one Allison doesn’t appreciate, not yet. “Not at all.”

 

\--

 

Cora understands the way her world works. Town is crowded, smells whirl and jam and there is nothing familiar or comforting to be found, not anymore. It was never a place she knew well, anyway. She knows the woods of the reserve; clear, pure, and always with that spot of darkness just off in the periphery, a blank space filled with ash and, now, with blood. It doesn’t feel right, burying Laura there, but it doesn’t really feel right burying her at all, and she knows of no other place. The smell of the wolfsbane she wraps around the grave sinks into her skin like damp weather. It is necessary. _Bury her in her true form and she will find her way home_.

Town is a risk. Her parents’ lessons have not left her, ghost hands clutching hers tight, _never go alone_ , but she goes all the same, tracing her way through the fading path of scents her sister left behind. _What did you find? Something that took you away. Why?_

It’s easy to let instincts take over and guide her way. She struggled with that for so many years, envious of siblings who never had to think to let their wolfish sides flow. She’d always had to concentrate to coax the wolf out of the cluttered recesses of her mind. Now, her thoughts were empty, and the wolf was drunk with it.

The smell that calls her to the high school is not Laura’s. She finds the cafeteria, though she’s never been before, and leans against the back wall with closed eyes, sifting through unfamiliar scents. When she opens her eyes, they land almost immediately on a girl, slightly off from the center of the room. She knows, _the wolf knows_ , it is her who brought Cora here. Where Laura’s was olive, this girl’s skin is pale, hair curled where her sister’s was straight, and her voice is light, not yet settled in with a growl. It’s not her alone, either. The ones at her table, they’re not wolves but they’re something, twins crackling with power and the boy, too, his scent weighted with the darkness she knows from the woods. He smells foreign, salted air like the sea, but the others, the twins and the girl, are jumbled, tumbled together, close, _pack._

When the girl stands the smell of it hits Cora from across the room. _A bite, a bite. Too fresh to be from Laura._

The girl is watching her, saying her name, and Cora shudders.  The school is a box of cement and plastic, trees all pulp and fake fluorescents in place of the sun.

_Not here._

 

\---

 

“I want to tell you, Lydia. It’s just - it’s complicated. I’m trying to figure out how to put it into words, but it’s hard - ”

“It always is, with you.” Lydia sighs, giving up her punishing stare as her eyes shift out to the general commotion on the field. The boys are jogging in place as the coach shouts about strategy, or at least they were until Stiles started correcting him and he made them switch to up-downs. Stiles is still trying to talk every time he comes up for air and Scott, next to him, looks horrified.

“Let’s start with him, with lunch.”

In conversation, for Allison, parameters are good. Lydia knows her too well.

“Scott drove me to school. I only just met him this morning, but - I was jogging, and I got hurt, and he was really great about it.”

“You got hurt? Hurt how?”

This is the thing with Lydia - she’s so controlled, Allison can never tell if there’s real emotion behind her words. Of course, she wants there to be, she wants to believe that Lydia, as her best friend, is concerned, and it _sounds_ like she is, but Allison knows Lydia can make herself sound however she wants. She just can’t tell, and it makes her shrink.

“I - I fell. I sprained my ankle pretty bad.”

Lydia’s jaw goes tight.

“You sprained your ankle?” She looks down at Allison’s flats, her perfectly unswollen feet. “Would I be able to tell if you were wearing heels?”

“That’s not all.”

One of the boys on the field lets out a shout like a war cry, trying to impress the others, guttural and low. It’s a pathetic imitation, but it creeps in under her skin, and she knows, her whole life, she’ll never forget the howl that rang out in the still morning air of the woods.

She doesn’t realize how long she’s let her words ring in the air until Lydia let’s out a frustrated - “Go - on.”

“When I fell, I - I got scared.”

 _I couldn’t breathe._ She hadn’t just fallen, she’d rolled, and hit the bottom of the steep slope, knocking the wind from her chest. It had been misty in the early hour and when she landed she was facing the rising sun with squinting eyes. At first, she’d thought it was a trick, a twisting illusion of the smoky air, but even as she struggled to sit straight, to breathe, her blood was wild. Her body knew what her mind could not realize, not yet.

She’d been approached by wild animals before in daydreams, as a child, and it was pure: a bird or moth landing on her shoulder, her finger, a deer making eye contact in the deep wood at dusk. This was nothing but cold, piercing fear, the kind that left her panicked but frozen, like when they put her under to have her wisdom teeth out, made her count down to her own paralyzation. _Trapped_.

The beast had snarled as it came out of the mist, drool splattering the leaves from it’s raised hackles. It’s flashing red eyes were shifting all around as it approached but hers were fixed, even them she couldn’t move, and then its snout was level with her shoulder. It took a great, heaving scent. She wanted to scream, wanted to cover her smell, dunk herself in a bath, a river and never come up. The red eyes fixed on hers, and it snarled furiously. Beside her, her fingers curled around a rock that lay flat under her hand, and just as it vaulted forward she raised her arm, so the sickening crunch of it against the beasts’ skull combined in the morning air with the sting of canines tearing into her stomach flesh. The beast yelped and snarled again and she screamed at it, raising the rock and scrambling back, and as it shrunk into the distance she turned with a limping run.

She showed Lydia as she explained, shifting so as to expose her stomach to her friend alone, instead of the whole lacrosse team. The scar was pale and puckered but it had not faded yet, unlike the scratches on her wrists and legs from the fall. She did not look up when she let her fingernails grow long, couldn’t look her friend in the eye for that one. She studied them, and sighed.

“Scott was out, too, just walking the trails, I guess. I ran into him, literally. But he knows, Lydia. His family - his mother is like this guide for...for werewolves, she’s incredible.”

“Do they know who it is? Who bit you?”

It is the first thing Lydia’s said since Allison began her explanation, and for a brief moment she wants nothing more than to curl into her best friend’s shoulder and cry. _She believes me. That wasn’t so hard, after all_.

“They don’t - I mean, I think she would have told me if they did. But, Lydia, there’s something else.”

“Seriously? Because I’m still kind of stuck on werewolves. And the fact that some new guy fixed everything before you even _told_ me.”

“Listen, Cora Hale? She was in the cafeteria this afternoon, remember? She’s one. Her whole family was. I don’t know how the McCalls know, but I think they’re right, I swear she heard us talking about her - “

“You think - you think she’s the one that turned you?”

“No, it has to be an alpha. She’s not an alpha. But, her sister was.”

“Was? I thought her sister survived the fire.”

“She did. Someone’s killed her since, they found...her, part of her, in the woods just the other night. I don’t know how it works exactly, but Mrs. McCall said if it was another wolf that killed her, it got her power. Whoever it was - they’re the one that turned me. They have to be.”

“And the McCalls don’t know who it is...does Cora?”

“That’s what I have to find out. Tonight - I’m going to go find her tonight.”

The unasked question hangs in the air, their silence broken by shouts and whistle-bursts from the field. There is a part of Allison, _a selfish part_ , she reminds herself, that hopes Lydia won’t come. All day, her body has been volatile, out of her control, but now, now that she knows at least this part of her life will be ok, she feels ready. Her blood is thrumming with the new power, and she wants to use it without check.

“I have a date,” Lydia says, and Allison tries not to let her relief show. “Although, god, now I get it why you were totally uninterested when I was telling you about it earlier.”

They both look up at a shout from the field. The coach had mixed the lines for scrimmage, spreading out the first among the second and third, so that each team would have a decent advantage. Scott had scored against the first line goalie, and a sheepish grin spreads across his face as Stiles, whooping, hangs an arm around his neck. Seeing the girls attention, Stiles points emphatically at Scott, and Allison smiles as she hears his words.

_"They’re looking at you, wave, Jesus, do something!"_

Scott waves, and Lydia looks over to Allison as she waves back.

“Allison - with the McCalls, and me and Stiles, you know you're going to be ok.”

Allison nods, and breaks her sentence with a small laugh.

“It’s just  - it’s a lot of change for one day.”

Lydia reaches over and squeezes her hand.

“Do you want me with you when you go?”

“No. I kind of - I want to do it on my own.”


	2. Chapter 2

Lydia was thirteen when she found her first dead body. Bodies, in actual fact, a triad of  teenagers in an overturned truck that had veered off the back road she took home from school. Behind the blood mist and the fractured windshield she could see limbs dangling in the shaded cab. She stood on the sidewalk, looking down over the steep slope of the hill, and watched the tall grass tickle flies in the breeze.

Thirty minutes later the police were there waiting for the coroners. Mrs. Melinski was fussing over her, over the grass stains on her legs from where she'd slid down the hill. But Lydia wasn’t listening to her mother. She was watching Stiles; no one else was watching Stiles, but she was. In fact, her mother was paying him so little attention that, at the sound of shattering glass, she reached for him, only to discover he was no longer standing behind her. He was crouched by the car, eyes wide, the remains of the driver’s side window in a glinting heap on the ground around him.

At first, there was yelling, scolding, but soon after silence met the scene again, because without the cracked glass to obscure the interior of the cab, it was clear the driver’s hands were tied to the steering wheel, those of the passengers tied to each other.

Lydia hadn’t just found three dead bodies. She’d found three murdered ones.

Mrs. Melinski had picked at it the whole way home, at the police, the bureaucracy of a crime scene, the _trauma_. Lydia was forbidden from walking home from school ever again, Stiles from touching _anything_. And in the years that followed, Lydia took the bus, like her mother wanted, and Stiles went with her, but he didn’t keep his hands to himself, _because, mom, that’s impossible_.

But, of course, it happened again. There was the couple who’d shot each other an hour or so before she’d brought them their girl scout cookie order, the nurse who'd fallen down the backstairs and twisted his neck when they were at the hospital for an x-ray, the old man who'd 'fallen asleep' with his electric cart taking up a whole aisle at the grocery. Once, she'd been waiting outside a loft downtown to pick up Stiles and three men had literally pulled over and dumped a body in a dumpster in front of her.

They aren't always murder, but still, the ratio of dead bodies to Lydia finding them is smaller than she'd like. And, somehow, Stiles always ends up there with her, but always like five minutes late, so instead of discovering the bodies he just whispers in her ear all kinds of who-done-it theories until she smacks him with her oxygen mask. And as often as Lydia finds dead bodies, Stiles' theories about how they went are 10-for-10.

It isn't something they talk about. Unlike many of the twins other quirks, its not one their parents can fix with a prescription. But it is shared between them, the same way neither really eats when they're apart from one another, the way Stiles will always end up in her bed when she's having nightmares. Nothing mystical, just a twin thing, deep bonds and all that, but Lydia hasn't been able to stop thinking about it since that afternoon, about all the dead bodies she's found over the years and how that's definitely _not normal_ , and how Stiles once picked out a guy from a crowd and told her he was the murderer and a few weeks later everyone found out he was right, he's always right, so when he says "I don't think you should go," she can't help it, not with everything that's happened that day. Her stomach clenches into a knot.

Their eyes meet in the vanity mirror and he jerks up as he speaks, pacing the room for just a second before sitting back down on the bed.

"Where is his apartment again?"

She frowns, her mascara wand wavering in front of her lashes.

"Like I'm telling you."

"What if he tries to kill you? What if he's the one that killed that girl, like he takes you out and then lures you into the woods...”

“Stiles.” She stands, snapping the clasp on her purse. “I hate those woods, so if he tries to _lure_ me out there, I’ll distract him.”

“Gross.” He’d jumped up the second she’d stood, fast on her heels as they descend the grand staircase. “Come on, Lydia. Mom and Dad are gone, we’ve got the whole house to ruin. Just cancel. Dump him, he’s too dumb for you, you’re too hot for him, etc, all of the above.”

There are so many ways she could respond. _‘Have fun’_ if she were feeling dismissive, _‘At least one of us should be getting laid’_ if she were feeling vengeful, _‘Sorry getting on the lacrosse team didn’t make you any friends’_ if she were feeling particularly so. She doesn’t say any of them, even as they spark through her head. Because really, ruining shit around the house would be fun, and if he actually put as much work into it as she does, Stiles would probably be getting laid, too. And its not like tutoring calculus has made her any lifelong pals. But mostly because its Stiles, and as much as she takes comfort in their co-dependency, she’s going, and she doesn’t want him lonely. Or, at least, not bored.

“I’m not canceling,” she says, one foot out the front door, “but - think about it, Stiles. He didn’t kill that girl.”

“If you’re his alibi, I don’t want to know.”

“Excuse me, I was studying with Allison that night - god that’s not even - that girl was mauled. As in, by something not...human.”

“As in...an animal?” He rolls his head as he says it, a physical emphasis of the sarcasm dense in his words.

Lydia tosses her hair out of her face, and smiles.

“Goodnight.”

 

The first text shows up right as she hits the stoplight at the corner of their drive, and a part of her really, really hopes he didn’t time it that way on purpose.

**what do you know**

The next one comes two minutes later, whether timed or not, when she has a second on a stretch of straight road to glance down again.

**share or i’m telling how old this guy really is. to dad.**

**pick your battles stiles**

**what killed her???**

Her hands grip the steering wheel, something solid, hold on. It’s real, obviously, she saw the mark on Allison’s skin, and just because werewolves are real doesn’t have to mean anything else. Nothing mystical. They’re twins, he always finds her, but that’s not part that terrifies her.How many times when they’re apart has she ended up staring down a vacant pair of eyes? And if she tells him, then its over, no more denial, no more pretending the number of bodies she’s found, the number of murder’s he’s envisioned, is anything more than bizarro B-movie coincidence.

But, because its Stiles, because he’s probably been researching and analyzing since she left, because Laura Hale was killed on a full moon and Lydia didn’t ever say it was an animal, because it’s Stiles -

**werewolf????**

Lydia looks out the windshield ahead of her and wants to scream.

**it bit allison this morning. scott knows more about it than i do.**

 

\-----

 

There's a pack of ground beef thawing on the counter when she walks in, start spaghetti sauce the only chore crossed off the dry erase board on the fridge. She listens for sounds from upstairs before she remembers its only two in the afternoon. _He must’ve come home during lunch to set it out._ Overnight shifts always mess with her body's schedule, but an unexpected double after an overnight just stings. The scrubs she's wearing are clean, relatively, and she barely has the energy to climb the stairs to her room; she’s not changing. Lying on her bed in the yellowing light of the afternoon, Melissa McCall falls asleep almost instantly.

 

As easy as it is for her to nod off, she can never stay asleep for long. She emerges to the clock blinking _4:00 ._ and the realization she'd fallen asleep at an odd angle, leaving her arm numb to the socket. By the time she’s back downstairs, the feeling is all but gone.

Their house is sparse. The fridge is stocked, mostly, although the onion she pulls from the pantry is their last. _Leftovers after tonight until I can get to the store again._ There are some boxes in the front room, holiday decorations she’d had shipped from an old storage unit she rented after Kyle had left and she and Scott had moved back to the ranch. She hasn’t touched the boxes; they were in storage for a reason. Meanwhile, their cabinets are empty save a six plate set and a few kitchen essentials she’d bought at the Salvation Army down the street. She’s been getting coffee from the gas station for a month. She hates it, but she’d started at the hospital before they’d even found the house, and getting Scott set up at school had been more important.

They'd taken a suitcase each when they left Pukalani, barely enough to fit a week's worth of clothes. Melissa knew how to pack light, but it was different this time. _10 years._ She can't imagine when they'll ever live so long in one place again. And Scott, he'd packed so quickly, she’d never had to yell. It was easy because it had to be. It should've been harder, but they hadn't had time.

She'd been in contact with other emissaries since. They had found the house, assuring her the Hale pack and their troubles had moved on. Apparently she was right to have been worried. It could be nothing, some nameless omega that got the better of the Hale girl, but with Allison bit and Cora alone she had two teenage werewolves, both packless, and an unknown alpha roaming the town. Theoretically she knew what to do for Allison, but all the wolves in the Nunes pack had been born; Melissa hadn’t ever met a turned one before. Their time that morning had been brief, too brief to prep Allison for her first full moon, too brief, really, for anything. But, as worried as she was, it was the question Scott had asked the girl that had stayed with Melissa all day, the one she hadn’t even thought of.

_What're you going to tell your parents?_

Melissa didn't know the Argents. They'd never met, it was doubtful, somehow, that they ever would. And she knew Scott hadn't met them either, he didn't know the girl. But hearing her response, hearing how quickly Scott had agreed when Allison had said she couldn’t tell them, _not yet_. Melissa could've smacked them both. Why? Why not go to them for help, like a sobbing child with a skinned knee? If she were Allison’s mother, her reaction would be guttural, it was guttural, _keep her calm, keep them safe._

She wipes onion tears away from her eyes, pressing her palms flat against the counter and leaning into her straightened arms, letting her back stretch. She’d picked spaghetti for dinner without a thought; on the ranch she used to cook spaghetti for seventeen, at the counter for hours while Missa ran in and out of the room, one eye always on the baby, _human_ , but they cared for their own. She’d like to think they would’ve welcomed Allison, surrounded her on the full moon with old wolves, wise ones, but they had always surprised her when it came to pack, to territory and markings and boundaries. She could still remember the first time she’d brought home Kyle, how Alexi, the alpha, had practically bared his teeth. She’d hated him for it then. She should’ve known better.

_Emissaries are supposed to know all the answers, but how many more times in my life am I going to think that?_

 

\----

 

Scott’s stomach growls the second he walks in the door, so loud there’s no way his mom didn’t hear. She’s flipping through a magazine at the kitchen island, and though she doesn’t look up, a grin sneaks onto her face.

“Twenty minutes, kiddo,” she says. Scott groans, letting all fifty pounds of his backpack hit the floor with a thud. “Long day?”

“Busy.”

Work was only a few hours, but before that he’d had lacrosse, and he’s still not sure how he feels about the team. Playing is fun, and the training is keeping him fit, but he’d never done competitive sports at his old school, and the animosity is throwing him.

Crossing behind the island, he dips a finger in the bubbling sauce, and his mother clucks as he stuffs it in his cheek.

“Well?”

He shrugs. “Little light on the salt.”

“No more salt. Do you know what sodium does to you? You get enough at school with that cafeteria food, anyway.”

The words are light, but she’s watching him carefully, and he backtracks, trying to think if there’s something he forgot, something he’s supposed to do.

“Want me to take out the trash?”

“Mm. After dinner.” She stands, pulling a pot from the cabinet that holds their dishes. “Wanna start the pasta?”

She stirs the sauce as he stirs the noodles, and when they’re ready they both pick one to throw against the cabinet, and it’s one of those moments since they came to town that feels familiar, but a little bit empty.

“How was school?” She’s watching him sideways, and when he catches her at it, she looks away. “How did - how’d she do?”

“Ok.” He stabs at the pasta with the pronged spoon. “She freaked out a little during lunch.”

“Did you help her?”

He picks up the pot with a shrug, dumping it over the strainer and squinting at the rising steam.

“Look, I know you’re not friends, necessarily, high school can be weird about that, but you’ve got to at least be aware, let her know you can be there, be supportive - ”

“She’s not - “

_Pack. She’s not pack, not ours. But I guess we’re packless, now, anyway._

“Not what?”

“Alone. Cora showed up at the school.”

She looks thoughtful, where he was expecting surprise, and he realizes, not for the first time, that something more is happening than he really understands. But if she was about to explain, the doorbell interrupts the thought.

They look at each other, and look at the door, and Melissa shrugs and Scott shrugs back. He crosses the front room in about two strides, opening the door to the fidgety figure of Stiles Melinski, who starts talking before Scott can even say a word.

“Hi. Ok. Wow, it smells good in there. Is that spaghetti? Off topic. On topic - there’s a totally reasonable reason I’m here...also that I know where here is, um, which would be that my lab partner actually lives across the street and I saw your bike here the other day and then I saw you get on your bike after practice - ”

He pauses, possibly to take a breath, and Scott jumps on the chance.

“You’ve got a good memory.”

Stiles looks surprised, mouth a little agape, and Scott tries to think of a reason why he’d be here.

“I - uh, I haven’t done the work for chemistry yet.”

“No, that’s not - jesus, your mom’s right there.” He shakes his head, emphasizing his words with a lot of raised eyebrows and a lot more fidgeting. “Look, I just, I came to ask you _something_ about _someone_ we both know...but I’ve since realized it’s just a little crazy and I’m not even going to ask anymore.”

Scott stares for a minute, thinks back to lunch, to lacrosse practice, how he definitely saw Allison showing Lydia the bandages from her bite mark on the bleachers. How, after lunch, Stiles had mentioned that they’d known Allison since they were kids.

“Is it about Allison?”

The moment he says it, he panics. _That’s not your secret to tell._ The fear must be plain on his face,but Stiles practically springs.

“Yes! _Dude_ , this is the exact kind of thing Lydia would tell me just so I’d make a fool of myself, she’s literally done it so many times she doesn’t even have to be present anymore to feel my shame.”

“Scott, who’s your friend?”

His mom behind him at the door, Scott watches, with no little amazement, as Stiles’ expression transforms into one acceptable for polite parent interaction.

“Mom, this is Stiles. He’s actually a good friend of Allison’s.”

“Oh. Well, would you like to come in?” Her smile is warm, but her hands are twisting together. _She’s nervous, inviting all these troubles back into our lives._ “We’re about to have dinner, I don’t know if your parents are expecting you.”

“Hah! Uh, no, no they’re out of town.” Stiles expression slips for a second, but he recovers it quickly, and if Scott knows anything, he knows his mother saw.

“Stay.”

Scott nods. “It’s good spaghetti.”

“Yeah, ok. Yes. Thank you.” The grin he’s wearing just seems to fit on his face. “Wow, spaghetti, seriously? Talk about a jackpot.”

 

\----

 

Stiles and Scott eat about three servings of spaghetti each, and Melissa nods them through it, mentally stilling her anxiety. _We’ll get take out tomorrow, should be enough extra in the debit account for that._ There’s a rough moment, in the beginning, when Stiles tries to figure out a way to make them say ‘werewolves’ before he does, but after that the talk is easy. The boys are good listeners, their foreheads crunching up every so often with a need for clarification.  When the conversation turns to Beacon Hills, to their situation as opposed to werewolves in general, Melissa tilts her head.

“Scott, you said earlier that Cora was at the school.”

“Cora,” Stiles perks up, “Cora Hale?”

“You know the name?”

“Yeah, I mean, everyone in town knows about them - about the fire. They just found her sister - “

Scott has to swallow a grin, but Melissa can’t scold him, because even with the subject matter, the look on Stiles’ face at the insight is comic.

“Are they - were, were they?”

“Laura was an alpha.” _The fourth in line in her pack, there’s no way she was ready._ She can still remember the way Alexi’s face had gone sour when he’d heard the news. “Whatever wolf killed her got that power.”

“You don’t think Cora - “

Scott breaks in, shaking his head.

“She’s still a beta. I saw her eyes, when she was in the cafeteria. She’s - she’s not hiding them very well.”

“She’s been through a lot of trauma,” Melissa nods, “it makes sense the wolf would surface more easily. Still, that doesn’t explain how she knew about Allison. Most wolves can sense each other, Stiles, if they’re close, even if both are trying to pass, but it sounds like Cora sought Allison out.”

Dark realization passes over Scott’s face.

“You think she’s already bonded with the new alpha?”

“Bonded? Sorry,” Stiles says, “you’re saying she’s bonded with the alpha that tore her sister in half?”

 _We need pack._ Melissa can hear Missa’s words echo in her mind. _We can't hold grudges, the wolves in us don't let us. There isn't much rationality there._

“Normally, when a new alpha takes over it'll either kill or bond the old pack. If the one that bit Allison is the same one that killed Laura, which is likely, its odd that it didn’t approach her after the bite. It may be it hasn't approached Cora either, in which case they're both in limbo for the same potential pack. It could be that the wolf in Cora brought her to the school because it recognized that, because it felt that potential connection between them. Or, it could be that she has bonded, that she’s scouting Allison out for the alpha. It’s about survival,” Melissa reminds them at the look on their faces. “Werewolves live in a bit of a different world than us.”

She glances at Scott at this, and he was watching her, but he looks away, hands shrinking from the table into his lap. Stiles’ eyes were on them, his look thoughtful, and she’s grateful when he breaks the silence with a low whistle.

“I know they weren’t a full pack, full strength and everything, but still...if alphas really are as powerful as all that, it seems crazy to think some other puny wolf could’ve actually killed one.”

At this, all her memories of the Nunes ranch, of their old life, desert her. She shakes her head.

“For an omega to kill an alpha...it’s not just crazy. It’s unheard of.”

 

\----

 

From the street she can see the lights are on in the apartment, though it’s far enough up the building that the open window shades don’t reveal anything to passersby. _Anyway_ , she thinks, _it’s not like there’s anything to hide_. She presses the buzzer next to his name and listens for the click of the lock. The building is new, her face reflected in the mirror walls of the elevator as it whizzes her up to his floor. It’s a loft apartment, so when she pressed 7A, the elevator understood to open on the left, straight into his living room. She walks in to candlelight, no one in sight.

“Hello?”

 _Did he light these because he saw me pull up?_ There’s no way he would’ve had time from when she buzzed him. Her heartbeat is faster in the semi-dark, and she remembers something Stiles told her once, _the physical reactions for fear and arousal are basically the same._

“Where are you?” she says softly, and jumps at the sound of his voice. He couldn’t have heard, but his words still feel like a response, loud and clear like the echo of her heels on the hardwood floor.

“In here.”

In the kitchen, he’s in the beginning throes of making dinner, but he pauses when she appears at the doorway, and picks up a ready glass of wine, pressing it into her hands.

“Lydia.”

“Peter.”

He kisses her cheek with a smile.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I support my decision to make Stiles and Lydia twins but wow was typing Stiles Melinski bizarre  
> also Allison & Cora will be back next chapter so don’t worry if you missed them :)


	3. Chapter 3

It’s Tuesday, only Tuesday and school is out but the three days left in the week is three too many. Her jaw’s been clenched for hours, temples pounding at the sound of 1400 shoes on high school linoleum.

“It’ll get better,” she whispers; Mrs. McCall’s words have been like a prayer since this began, since the moon started to swell and she felt herself beginning to slip. _After the first full moon, it’ll get better._

It sounds like the truth, and she wants to believe it, she _did_ believe it, but this morning she’d woken up in the woods with blood on her hands and no memory of how she got there. All day she’s been unfocused, and even as her hands grip the steering wheel she’s distracted by the black smudge of flakes underneath her fingernails.

 

“There wasn’t, like - there wasn’t a _body_ \- “

“No,” Allison says quickly and Lydia huffs out a breath. “The smell - I think it was a squirrel, but Lydia...I think I ate it.”

“Nope.” Lydia flicks a cherry at her and it lands on her sleeve. “Nope, we’re getting fro-yo, Allison, we’re not talking about - about squirrels.”

They sit at the only table on the patio that’s still in the sun and chat as they wait for Stiles; Finstock had kept them late at practice.  Or, rather, Lydia chats and Allison dwells on wishing they hadn’t sat outside. It’s too exposed, but then everything’s been too exposed lately, and maybe it’s just because Mrs. McCall had warned her that the alpha might try to approach, but she feels watched, constantly. At school, after school when they stay and watch the boys at lacrosse, even when they were at Lydia’s the other night for a sleepover study date. She hasn't’ seen anything, no glowing eyes, no shadows, but the feeling is enough like instinct, and the tension of not knowing is making her simmer.

“I wanna try and talk to Cora again.”

Lydia’s eyes go wide, likely in a combination of disbelief at Allison’s words and frustration at the realization she’d spent the past few minutes basically talking to herself. Neither of the girls seems to register when Stiles pulls up, but after he goes inside Allison grits her teeth.

“I need help, Lydia.”

“You need a brain transplant.” Lydia’s response is immediate.

“I really don’t think it’ll be that bad.”

“What’s bad?” Stiles takes the chair next to his sister, ignoring the high brows the girls give his cup of candy sludge.

“Nothing. Nothing’s bad, I just have to be diplomatic.”

Stiles snorts, at the same time Lydia says, “I’m coming with you.” Her brother’s head snaps up from where he was eyeing his fro-yo.

“Oh,” Allison says, “oh, no - “

But Lydia’s expression is dangerous, and Stiles’ grin is wide.

 

\-- - --- - --

 

“This is such a bad idea.”

“It’ll be fine, Allison.” Stiles swats a thorny branch out of their way, and it snaps back to hit her arm.

“No, like, I’m actually realizing how bad of an idea this is. If she got so territorial last time because I showed up close by where she’s hiding out, how, how exactly is she going to react to me doing it again, with two _additional_ people?”

“Maybe,” Lydia says, “this time, you could not start off the conversation with the implication she’s working with the guy that killed her sister.” She shrugs at Allison’s glare.

“She’s going to think we’re trying to ambush her.”

They’re past the point where the woods behind the school turn into the reserve, past the point of borders and paths. It’s nothing but bird whistles and shifting leaves here, no car sounds and no radio-wave hum, even with her hearing intimately attuned.

“Allison,” Stiles says, “you’re looking at it all wrong. It’s a respect thing, right? You’re totally respecting, cause us coming with you, you’re saying ‘You’re a strong wolf but I’m bringing my pack with me anyway, even though I know you could rip all three of us apart with your clawed little pinkie.’ It’s like a show of good faith.”

“That’s not comforting, Stiles.”

“Allison,” Lydia says, ignoring her brother, “do you know where we actually are? Like can you smell anything?”

“It kind of just smells like leaves,” Allison shrugs, with a bit of a grin because her wolf senses are riding the nature high and she’s not really sure how to describe the sensation to the twins.

“My excitement over your werewolf powers is dimming by the day,” Stiles says, but he grins at the clawed middle finger she raises.

 

It’s something she’s done before, something she does a lot, actually, but Allison can never get used to the way Lydia just disappears. It’s always quiet, always unexpected, always when they’re right in the middle of something. Only, before when she’s disappeared, it’s been at the mall or in the halls between class, somewhere with people who can point them after her. Never somewhere so remote.

“Shit,” Stiles grinds his teeth, but the panic Allison feels is fading with the breeze.

“I can smell her,” she says, and she jumps on the scent, Stiles skinning after her up the steep slope in front of them. A few minutes, maybe, before the hill plateaus just enough to support the mansion that’s framing Lydia in the evening’s dying light. The smell of ash builds each step Allison takes closer, and of mold but also clean earth - like the area around the burnt out shell of a building is growing strong.

Lydia’s hair is twisting in her fingers and Stiles whistles low.

“Is this - I mean, do you think its, you know - “

“Look, Stiles,” Allison says softly, nodding to a pair of ‘H’s on the twisted iron rails.

“Allison,” Lydia starts, but whatever she was going to say she swallows back at the sight of Cora Hale emerging from the shadows.

“What’re you doing here?”

 

\- - -

 

Cora spits the words out strong even though its the opposite of how she feels, with one twin standing on her sister’s grave and the other staring like he can see straight through her. She growls low when they don’t answer, snaps her teeth and flings out her arms though her fists are curled tight, the sting of her nails digging into her palms the only way she’s found to keep herself sane.

“Whoa,” the boy says, “whoa, whoa we’re not - Allison, tell her, we’re not here to start a fight - “

“What is this place?” It’s the girl, the other twin, the words scraped up out of her throat like she’s choking on smoke.

The question doesn’t really make sense, it’s obvious they know, but then it hits Cora that she’s not asking what but why, and for a moment she’s sorry she doesn’t have an answer.

“You don’t know why you’re here? Why you came?”

_You don’t know what you are?_

“Well,” the new wolf, Allison, says, “well, we were looking for you.”

“I don’t live here.”

“I know.” She can practically hear the girl’s struggle, with the wolf inside her rearing it’s head. “I mean, you don’t smell like it, I - we weren’t looking for you here _specifically_ , Lydia just - “

She shoots a look at the twin girl, whose breathing is shallow now, less like a trance.

“We just stumbled on it.”

“Why are _you_ here?” says the boy, and although he does sound curious, it’s clear from his tone that it’s meant to be a joke. Maybe, years ago when her everyday interactions were with a mix of humans and wolves, she might’ve been capable of taking it with as such. She frowns instead, and both the girls are looking at him in disbelief.

“I - you don’t have to answer that,” Allison says.

“I know.”

It’s clear now they didn’t come as a threat, they see her as a threat which is almost laughable. She’s not really sure she wants to correct the mistake. But it doesn’t matter either way, because when she looks up to speak she catches a flash in the distance, the setting sun lighting up a pair of red eyes.

She’s off, wolfed out and vaulting over their heads and after him into the far woods.   _What are you doing here?_ she wants to snarl, the invasion thrumming in her blood. _What more could you possibly want?_

She can hear their shouts behind her, and she knows she’s not fast enough, but she doesn’t have to be. All she needs is the scent.

 

\-  - -

 

“Well,” Allison says, staring at the crater of leaves Cora left in her wake. “That went well.”

“Diplomacy,” Stiles nods, and Lydia buries her face in her hands.

 

\--- - --  ---

 

It’s pure luck that her father is called out of town the day of the full moon, pure control that she doesn’t rip out his throat when he shakes her awake to a whispered apology, _something came up, I gotta run_. She’s not going to school, she knows that already, walking around the empty house with her eyes on fire.

Lydia is supposed to come over after class, Stiles to join after lacrosse, but when 5:30 hits and neither one has shown up or even answered their phone, she has to do something.

She doesn’t drive, doesn’t need to. Running feels so right, even though with humans all around she can’t run doubled down like the wolf wants. The nature that’s seeped into the suburbs grabs her: burst of flower blooms, ipomoea, cereus, the clicking of squirrels, the whine of crickets.

Their raised voices reach her before she’s at the house, before she’s even on the street. She stops in front of the long drive, crouched and panting like a dog. Mrs. Melinski is yelling, the twins yelling back, Mr. Melinski yelling at them all to shut the hell up.

Her heartbeat should be calming now she’s still, but it can’t, she can’t settle. As she listens, the twins emotions grow inside of her, until she’s practically steaming on their darkening lawn.

She could walk inside, easy, an explosion of wood if she tore through the door. She could take care of the parents, so the twins could take care of her.

But she doesn’t, somehow, she turns away heavy, and the howl that rises from her chest sounds far away.

 

\-- - -- ---

 

Scott doesn’t know what to do about Allison. He doesn’t know what to do about any of it, really, because it’s not just her: it’s her and the Melinskis. It’s classes that had been empty for weeks that are suddenly filled with conversation, it’s Stiles dragging him over to play video games after lacrosse, it’s Lydia bringing her terrier in for a check-up and spending the whole hour talking about their calculus homework with such comprehension that, when she leaves, he has to re-read his just to make sure he knows what it was. It’s all of them sitting together at lunch and it’s the fact that every so often he catches himself talking, laughing and responding with ease.

“You’re making friends,” his mother comments one night, when she comes home from a shift at midnight to find him half-asleep with a kill screen flashing on the old laptop Stiles lent him, his headphones hanging off his ear. He couldn’t sleep after that, his stomach so twisted from her words, and it wasn’t just the thought of filling the space the Nunes boys left behind that bothered him. It was the context.

Because the twins laugh when Allison mentions some teacher’s gossip she overheard; they pick at her constantly to see what else, with her new powers, she can do. After practice one day, she jumps twenty feet from a tree she climbed on the edge of the field and lands light on her feet, and the twins whoop and holler and she smiles at him, but he can’t smile back. Because it was only a few months ago that Alexi Nunes, the only werewolf he knows of that survived long enough to see his 40th birthday, died with his pack, humans and wolves alike. They’re not close, he and Allison and her friends, not yet, not the way he was with the Nunes boys, but it doesn’t matter; he knows how it’ll end.

So, when Allison shows up shaking on the evening of the full moon, with his mother only three hours into a twelve hour shift, and the twins, apparently, in a major parent brawl, Scott really, really doesn’t know what to do.

 

\--- - --

 

It’s like a dream, approaching the house, the kind so right it sinks your stomach. The yard, the landscaping, the paint job are all the same as they were when she was a child, holding tight to her father’s hand for the rare excursion into town the meetings called for. Only, when she knocks, its not her emissary that answers but the mother, McCall, a name she’d heard in her parents whispered conversations, now made flesh. Like her son she smells like saltwater and the metallic tang of porous rock. The house itself has been empty too long to smell familiar.

“Cora,” the woman says, and she doesn’t care how she knows her name, who she is.

“How is she?”

“She - she’s all right.”

She’d forgotten how loud this night could be, how crowded. She and her siblings were accustomed to one another, accustomed to all the sounds and scents that the others knew would keep them grounded. Tonight, she could hear Allison’s wolf, wild, from far across town.

“Who is it?”

The boy is close, just there in the hall and she bounds to the sound of his breath, to where he’s slumped in front of the barricaded basement door. He starts, and she tries to swallow down her eyes, but the moon is clamped tight on her form.

“Cora,” he says, and she wonders if he can hear the way the word sounds just like before when it came from his mother’s mouth. She looks to the women, who’d followed Cora inside with an incredible propensity for remaining calm.

“I’m here to help,” Cora says. The veracity of the growls rising from the basement has been growing since she set foot in the door, and somewhere off in the distance, deep and powerful enough for them all to hear, comes the sound of an alpha howl.

 


	4. Chapter 4

When she wakes it's with a dry throat and an ache in her gut that has nothing to do with hunger. _I was out of control._ Even knowing it was going happen doesn’t make it feel any less like a failure. But, awake, the memories of the night begin to dim like a dream.

She’s in Scott’s room, his bed, sunk in the smells of sweat and salt and a sweetness rich as honey. She loses herself there, just for a moment, a squeeze of rumpled sheets between her thighs before she forces her sore body to stand.

The voices that woke her fall silent as she steps into the hall, gingerly descending the stairs, and as she reaches the kitchen she realizes the silence was born out of expectation, not fear. _They’re waiting for me to speak._

“Where’s Lydia?” she asks. Stiles is standing across the counter from a seated Mrs. McCall, Scott by the fridge, but Lydia nowhere in sight. Allison could’ve sworn she’d heard her voice along with the others.

“You just missed her,” Stiles replies, and she doesn’t have the energy to hide her disappointment. Out of all of them, Lydia is the one she wants to see most - Lydia, who wouldn’t stop to call her out on the things she’d said the night before, who wouldn’t take more than a second to get over it as soon as she apologized.

It’s obvious Stiles can read her disappointment, and he continues before anyone else has a chance to speak.

“She - uh, she was here all night. Stood up that guy and everything, he’s called a bunch, I think he was pretty pissed about it. She’s going to meet up with him later. But she was here. Cora was too, she left around sunrise but she was here most of the night. And - and us.”

She looks around, following the gesture of Stiles’ hands to the others, but when her eyes catch on Scott he shifts on his heels, dropping his own gaze quickly. There’s a tight-lipped grin on Stiles’ face, Mrs. McCall’s eyes bright with what she hopes like hell isn’t pity.

“Did I - “

“You did well, Allison.”

Since Allison first opened her eyes, the wolf had been coming alive inside her, stretching her senses to all the sights and sounds and smells of a world awake.  It calms at Mrs. McCall’s words, at the sound of her voice molasses thick, and all at once she understands how much closer they are, the wolf and herself. Two realities, two consciousness’, melding into one.

“I don’t think I can go to school.”

She had been staring at the ground, watching the dust breathe across the kitchen tiles, and she looks up just in time to see Scott and Stiles exchange a glance.

“What?”

“Uh, well, good news: it’s actually almost 4 p.m., so school’s not really an issue.”

“Oh.” Exhaustion hits at this, and all she can think of is how close  the bed is, how comforting, but four in the afternoon means she’s already been here close to twenty-four hours. She gives her head a little shake, and sighs to Stiles. “Can you just take me home?”

“Ok,” he begins, with another burst of that special brand of nervous energy, “yes, I really would like to, but my parents are such dicks - sorry, Mrs. McCall, but like they didn’t even ground us, just, like, ‘Have fun getting around without a car like you’re twelve and you don’t have lacrosse practice every night’, as if my calves aren’t dead enough already - “ He slows at the look that’s come over her face. “They - they locked up all the car keys. I rode my bike.”

“Scott, why don’t you drive her home? You can take the car.”

She’s telling, not asking, and a part of Allison is grateful, but most of her wants to just curl up in a ball and dissolve at the uncomfortable look on Scott’s face. He and his mother hold their gaze for a moment before he shrugs it away, turning to Stiles.

“Want a ride?”

“Uh - no, no, you should get her home.”

She can feel Stiles’ eyes on her as he speaks, knows he’s giving her the opportunity to change his answer, to ask in some subtle body language for him to tag along, but her jaw line is set. _Let him be uncomfortable, not able to avoid being alone with me. I haven’t done anything to deserve this._

“Besides,” Stiles is saying, “I don’t think my bike would fit.”

 

The ride is silent, Scott’s driving steady. If he _is_ pissed about having to drive her home, he hides it well. The driveway is empty when they arrive, thank god, her father not home yet. Allison is tired, filterless, so when he says, “This is it, right?”, even as she’s nodding her way out of the car, she can’t really help what comes next.

“Do you hate me? I mean - you don’t have to answer that, I guess.”

“No, I - I don’t hate you.” It isn’t a lie, his heart doesn’t skip a beat, but his knuckles are white on the steering wheel, and she can’t help but arrive at the only other conclusion she can find.

“Does it remind you of - of Hawaii?”

The word is like a spell; finally, he meets her eyes, and as her hand relaxes from the door handle, for once, he doesn’t immediately glance away.

“You’re not like them. My old pack, you’re nothing like them.”

She nods to the dashboard, biting tight on her lip. _Except that I’m a werewolf, bringing all this trouble back into your life._ And knowing first-hand the idiocy of the question, she doesn’t ask if he misses them.

“I lost my mother a few years ago. I’m not - I’m not trying to compare, or anything, I just - I mean, I had Lydia and Stiles, I can’t imagine if I hadn’t, trying to work through all that alone.”

There’s silence but it isn’t like before. Words of remembrance, of solidarity, are to comfort the living, and this moment, a small one, is for the dead. Not everyone understands this, but she thinks Scott does.

“You _did_ do well last night,” he says, one hand toying with the fraying stitches of the steering wheel. “It’s not easy for turned wolves, without a guide.”

“I had your mom.”

“Yeah. Yeah, she’s a good emissary.”

“Is she mine, now?”

She swallows that hope at the look on his face, the way he goes all tense again.

“I guess - I guess you need a pack to need an emissary.”

“No, no - I mean, yeah, normally. I didn’t mean to react like that.” His eyes are fixed on the windshield, the space in front of them, but it’s obvious he’s not seeing the lawn, not following the movement of foraging squirrels in the evening light.  “You forget, when things are quiet, how dangerous it can be. An emissary is supposed to protect their pack, and I - I don’t think we can protect you.”

“You don’t have to protect me, Scott.” She reaches out before she realizes it, slowing just for a second before she gives in and squeezes his hand. “We can be pack. All of us, we can protect each other.”

He doesn’t say anything, doesn’t nod, but when a flock of birds light up from the junipers in the yard, they both look up to the sound & the sight.

“Look,” Allison pushes her bangs back, gathering herself as the birds fade into the distance. “My dad’s not home yet. I’m - I may just pass out, but, I think - “

“Want me to stay?”

“Will you? I don’t want to be alone just yet.”

 

They settle on the couch in the living room, a movie on and Allison lets the exhaustion take over. If it was the wolf she was sleeping off before, its her human mind now that needs the break. She sinks into the cushions and over a little into Scott, who shifts for both their comfort, and she knows then it wasn’t the bed, the soft sheets that she’d wanted to return to before. It was the smell, just him.

She drifts in seconds, and when she wakes, he’s up, but bleary-eyed, too, the sky outside dark.

“Phone,” he nods, and she realizes it was her cell’s resounding ring that woke her. She snatches it up from the table.

“Huh.”

“Your dad?” He’s stretching out his arms, kneading in to the back of his neck.

“No,” she frowns, “it was Lydia.”

“That’s odd?”

“No. Not really. But - Stiles said she was on a date?”

“Yeah, thats what she told us.”

“She never calls from a date,” and Allison clicks open the voicemail.

Even through the sound of Lydia’s rushed speech she can hear his heartbeat ratcheting up, in tune with the look of fear she knows is coming over her face. He speaks the second she lowers the phone.

“What is it? What’d she say?”

“She...she found him. Lydia - she found the alpha.”

His expression mirrors her thoughts almost exactly.

_Or he found her._

 

\- -- ---- - --

 

Cora doesn’t really have an excuse for showing up at the house again. She can say she’s there to check in on Allison, though at five in the evening it's unlikely she’ll still be there. It’s possible, too, that she could say she’s there just to check in in general.   _Worry_ had been coming off Mrs. McCall in waves the night before, though it was only after the intensity of the full-moon wolf wore off that Cora had realized worry was what it had been. She doesn’t really know what she’s going to say, never has been one for planning ahead. She just knows she couldn’t keep away any more, couldn’t keep wandering around the city on her own.

It had been misting when she set out, and now that she’s arrived on their street the rain is coming down even harder. She’s about to sprint the last few lengths of sidewalk, but the thought hits her how pitiful she’ll look when they open the door, soaked through and panting, and she stops in her tracks. A diluted memory of how the house looked before springs into her mind, at odds with the present foreign smells. _It doesn’t matter that they know. They are not family. They’re not pack._

It’ll be soaking in the cave where she sleeps; water always pools there, near the bottom of the ravine. The mansion - she could go there, just camp out somewhere the roof isn’t caved in, just until the storm passes. But she can’t make her feet move, can’t turn her back, just stands there glaring at the house and willing the world to stop spinning.

A horn honks, making her jump, and a splash and a curse let her know the warning was not directed at her. Up ahead, a passing car had almost run a biker off the road - had at the very least succeeded in running him into a large puddle. Her nose twitches. Even through the rain she can smell him. When she steps forward, he looks up, and she knows the water will reflect her flashing eyes.

“Cora?” He trips up his bike, pushing it towards her with barely a limp. “What - you’re soaked.”

She raises an eyebrow at this, and Stiles grimaces, glancing down at himself.

“I guess you’re not alone. How long have you been out here?”

“They’re not home.”

She can see it now she’s closer to the house. No lights, no sounds from inside, all their smells faint and drifting.

“Shit.”

“Why are you here?” she asks, eyeing the slight scrape in his jeans.

“I left my phone. They’re really not? I know his mom had to work but Scott took Allison home like an hour ago at least.”

He’s peering over the slight slope of their yard, like he’s going to spot one or the other hiding behind a curtain. When he deflates, it’s only for a second; he looks back to her sideways, and she frowns in anticipation.

“You can’t, like...sniff him out, can you?”

“I’m not a bloodhound, Stiles.”

“Ok, ok, sorry. I hate not having my phone. Shit,” he mutters again, wiping his wet hands on his wet jeans. “I guess - maybe he’ll call, I bet he will when he gets home, my home number. You - you wanna dry off? It’s not far.”

It’s a formality, so obviously an instinct leftover from a polite upbringing, but he looks at her as he asks, really looks, and she sighs.

“I might be able to, if I’m dry, if this dries up a little,” she gestures around. “Track him down, I mean. I can try.”

“ _Really_?” She’s never seen a mood change so fast. “You’re a godsend, Cora. Do you like pizza? I don’t know what - what you eat, we could order one.”

She gives him another harsh look at this.

“Did Allison suddenly quit eating pizza when she was bit?”

“Oh my god, she never eats pizza, are you kidding? She’s like one of those salad and grapefruit chicks, have you seen her?”

He rides his bike in slow circles in the street as she walks the sidewalk, slightly off-kilter and talking all the while, and she’s listening, kind of, though she can find more meaning in the sound of his voice blending in and out with the dimming rain than the words he’s actually saying.

 

“So, the dining room and kitchen are back there; there’s not really a ‘living room’ but we have a den and the porch, and the outside dining area…”

The house is huge, and she immediately places it as the scent that trails the twins. A fresh cut landscape and symmetry inside, and not a stray bit of lint on the carpet where they’re trekking in a trail of muddy footprints.

“Everything else is upstairs - oh, except, the parents rooms are down here too, mom’s by the back, the garden walk, and - uh, dad’s with his study...over there by the parlor.”

He’s looking at the floor, a hand smoothing back his clean cut hair, and the realization that he’s nervous comes with a rush of warmth.   _Nervous about new people, bringing them here. Bringing people home. Just like me._

“So - where’s your room?” she asks, and the grin that appears on his face is worth everything.

“Upstairs, come on.”

 

Stiles takes the stairs two at a time, and Cora can’t resist vaulting up as well, racing past the way she used to with her brothers, maybe showing off, just a little. She slows when they reach the top, and then stops short in front of the very first room.

“Oh, uh - that’s Lydia’s. That one,” he’s pointing to others up and down the hall, “is the TV room, and the library’s over there by mine.”

He turns that way, but Cora doesn’t follow. She can’t, not yet. There’s something in that Lydia’s room, something familiar. A scent impossible to resist.

The room is a mess, clothes everywhere, books and papers scattered, a fine layer of makeup powder covering it all. She begins to dig through it, though she’s not so fixated on the smell that she doesn’t notice Stiles standing in the doorway.

“Uh - Cora?”

“What is this?”

“That is...a shirt.”

She brings it to her nose, a deep inhale of the tight-knit linen, and shakes her head.

“Why does it smell like this?”

“I don’t know, maybe cause it’s been lying there for like three weeks?”

“No, it’s not - it doesn’t just smell like her. Do you remember when she wore it, what she was doing?”

Stiles frowns, leaning back against the frame.

“That - she was wearing it when we were at the hospital a few weeks ago. I was getting an MRI, she was picking up random strangers.”

“The hospital.” She nods, inhaling into the fabric again.

“That’s it?”

“I - maybe. I don’t know.”

“What’s it smell like to you?”

“The hospital, but...the way it smelled after the fire.” Every word twists out of her throat like a knife. “When they were bringing in all the bodies, everyone they could salvage. I - I need to talk to her, Stiles. Can you call her?”

“Nah, she’s on a date, she wouldn’t pick up.” He grins. “Wanna crash it?”

_She knows something.  She has to._

“Yeah,” Cora says, “Yes, I guess I do.”

“Sweet.” He gestures them both back out into the hall. “Funny, actually, I think she met the guy she’s with there that day.”

 

Downtown isn’t any closer than Scott’s house, but the route is almost all downhill. With Stiles on his bike and Cora keeping up, it’s a quick trip. The rain has turned to a drifting mist; it’s not late when they reach the restaurant, but still, there aren’t many passers-by.

“It’s this one here,” Stiles locks his bike to the street lamp, and they’re almost at the door when Cora stops. An imperceptible turn to the right, and she catches it. The girl’s scent is fresh, she’d just been here. _They’ve left already_. But she’s close, on foot. Cora pushes her hair from her eyes, slouching her nose close as she can to the ground, and follows the scent.

 

\---- -- ---

 

Even with one arm draped over the back of the chair he’s poised, still and straight. He’s pondering whether to go after her now - god, he wants to - or whether to let the game stew a little more. But at the sound of a recognized voice, one heard only ever in the background of phone calls, the decision is made for him.

The boy is standing close to the counter, straight in Peter’s line of sight, peering at the list of names.

 _Melinski? No? They probably used his name. I don’t see her though_ , the boy looks past the host out into the room, and instinct tells Peter to duck, but he ignores it. If anything, it’d bring more attention to him. They’ve never met, passed once in a hall at the hospital. He won’t be recognized. He isn’t.

_You guys don’t have a back room or anything? I’m looking for a girl - Lydia - about this tall, red hair._

The boy looks over his shoulder and then back to the host, mouth askew.

_Did I - did someone walk in with me? Did I walk in alone?_

The door opens again for an older couple, and the smell on the breeze that accompanies them is one he would recognize anywhere. Beta, and it doesn’t smell like his turned, but like his all the same. He stands carefully, inconspicuously, and turns to the back. Through the kitchen, out the back door, and he’s come around again to the front where the boy’s conversation with the host is just coming to an end.

“Great. You were great, really, thanks, _for nothing_ ,” the last two words added as he steps out again into the mist, and he only has a moment before Peter steps up behind him, claws sharp around his throat.

“You’re in luck, Stiles,” he breathes into the boy’s ear. “Finding your lovely sister is bound to go faster with us both.”


End file.
